The Man to His Left
by jeri
Summary: You never know who you'll meet in the doctor's office. (very post-Requiem)


TITLE: The Man to His Left  
AUTHOR: jeri  
E-MAIL: ggal1116@yahoo.com  
RATING: PG  
CATEGORY: SR (H? You tell me.)  
KEYWORDS: MSR/M, Babyfic  
SPOILERS: Christmas Carol/Emily, all things, Requiem  
ARCHIVE: Sure, just drop me a line!  
STARTED: July 20, 2000  
FINISHED: July 21, 2000  
  
SUMMARY: You never know who you'll meet at the doctor's office.  
  
**DISCLAIMER: You know who CC owns. The Mulders and the Scullys, that's right. Well, all the others herein are mine, so getcher hanzoff! ::Grrrowwlll:: (Sorry, my disclaimer muse is a little over-protective...)  
  
NOTE: This is not a part of either 'Sleet and Ice' or 'Vulpecula'. My gas is running low on those for the moment, so I'm taking a little side-trip for the moment. Don't fear, faithful readers (all 5 of you...), S&I and V will return after this brief commercial break.  
  
^*^*^  
  
November 4, 2002  
Norverds Family Care Center  
  
The elevator doors closed in front of Mulder's face, and the bundle in his arms lunged severely to the right, straining towards the panel of buttons that directed the elevator's motion.  
  
"Go ahead, Banana. Hit the '2'."  
  
The hand that escaped the bundle did as Mulder directed, and as the elevator began moving, a shriek of delight filled the tiny space.  
  
"Uppa, Daddy?"  
  
"Goin' up, Banana," Mulder confirmed, grinning at the face of the bundle. The face was surrounded by a large, thick, fleece hood, as was the rest of the child's body.  
  
All too soon, the elevator stopped, and the doors opened revealing a hallway lined with doors. From behind on door, however, came a raucous noise. Mulder frowned with chagrin, knowing that his destination lay behind the door that held back the hullabaloo.  
  
With resignation he headed for suite 204, thinking once again how he hated doing doctor runs during flu season. But a muffled sneeze from the fleece-clad baby in his arms spurred him onward, more determined than ever to survive this trip.  
  
Cautiously, he opened the door and was instantly blasted by the heat of the room. He made his way to the receptionist's window, carefully avoiding the toddlers that were sprawled in his path.  
  
"Hi, sir. Sorry about the crowd; all the docs are running behind today. Cold season, ya know?"  
  
Mulder nodded. He knew all too well. Scully was presently bed-ridden with a strain of the influenza bug that seemed to not care that she'd gotten a flu shot this year. Once more, nature outsmarts medicine.  
  
"That's fine. I've got nothing else to do. Um, it's Anna Mulder to see Dr. Waterston." He shifted the patient on his hip, anxious to put her down.  
  
"Okay. Well, it should be close to an hour's wait. If you'd like to reschedule for tomorrow, we'll put you on top priority..."  
  
"No, that's okay. I can wait."  
  
"All right, well, Dr. Waterston should be ready to see you in about an hour."  
  
With that task complete, Mulder sought out an empty chair. Luckily, one was available, but if his appointment had been twenty minutes later, he knew he'd be on the floor with the kids.  
  
He sat down in the chair, trying awkwardly not to bother the rather large woman to his right, or the uncomfortable-looking man to his left. He stood Anna at his feet and quickly removed her fleece jacket. He heard her sigh in relief as she became free of her bindings.  
  
He smoothed back her fine, chestnut hair and did his best to fix the barrette that was well on its way to falling out. In the last two years, he'd become quite adept at being a hairdresser.  
  
"Sarah Verrena?" called a doctor from the doorway. Mulder looked up and saw that it was Anna's doctor, Maggie Waterston. With a shake of his head, Mulder marveled for the bzillionth time how she'd ended up as their pediatrician. It had been luck of the draw, really. When they looked at the list of family-care doctors provided by the Bureau's HMO, Maggie had just happened to be the one that went most-highly recommended. Scully had confessed that she'd never even tried to find out what Maggie was doing with her life when Daniel was in the hospital. When Scully had first called Maggie, the doctor was wary, as she rightly should have been. But when Scully explained that she was calling to see if Maggie would be Anna's pediatrician, Maggie was more willing, knowing that Scully really didn't have any interest in Daniel's life anymore.  
  
"Daddy? Puzzle?" Mulder focused his attention back on his daughter. She was pointing towards a small table that was covered with puzzles. He noted that there were two other children there already, a girl of about seven and a boy that looked four or five.  
  
"Go on over, Banana," he encouraged, giving her a gentled push on her behind. "Go pick out a puzzle and show me when your finished, okay?"  
  
"'Kay Daddy," Anna agreed, already toddling over to the table.  
  
Mulder pulled his trusty paperback from his coat pocket, reading it with one eye, keeping the other on Anna. After the incident at the mall last month, Mulder watched his miracle child like a hawk, and Scully had to gently remind him to give Anna room to breathe sometimes.  
  
The Mall Incident wasn't anything terribly serious. Well, it seemed serious at the time, and even now he still felt a chill when remembering it, but he knew when Anna was older, they'd all laugh about it.  
  
Anna had gotten restless just sitting in her stroller, so Scully had let her out, holding tightly on to her hand as she walked. He and Scully had separated while she looked for his birthday present, and Anna had started calling for her daddy. Scully had looked up, saw a tall, dark-haired man a few feet away and let Anna run over to him and grab his hand. Then Scully turned away.  
  
Meanwhile, Mulder was in another store completely, not even tempting the urge to spy on his wife to see what she was buying him. He finally exited the store to see if she'd finished yet. She was waiting outside the store with her purchase and an empty stroller next to her. Nervously, he'd asked where their daughter was, and she glared at him, telling him not to scare her like that. He insisted he was serious, and she panicked, running into the store to try and find the baby, while he started searching the hallway, calling out her name in case she'd just wandered off.  
  
Luckily, the misidentified man had noticed that it wasn't his Timmy who'd grabbed his hand, and quickly notified the nearest mall cop that he'd found a lost child. When Mulder rushed to him and asked if he'd seen a little girl, yea big, purple dress, chestnut hair, the cop replied that a lost child of that description was just turned over to the proper authorities. Five minutes later, Anna was happily back in her parents' arms.  
  
Both Mulder and Scully had blamed themselves at first, but eventually they realized it was just an honest mistake, and they counted themselves lucky that Anna had ended up in the right hands.  
  
But since then, they either avoided large, crowded, public areas, or kept her in her stroller.  
  
"Finis'ed, Daddy," Anna proclaimed, proudly holding up the completed puzzle for her father to see.  
  
"Great job, Banana," Mulder grinned. He sensed the man to his left's interest, and his heart swelled with pride. "Keep up the good work."  
  
As Anna hurried back to the table to do another puzzle, the man commented, "Pretty quick. How old's she?" The slight British accent surprised Mulder.  
  
"Two in late January. Anna's got this thing for puzzles. She's like a puzzle prodigy or something." Mulder replayed his words when he heard the man's quiet chuckle. "Sorry, guess I sound like every parent, huh?"  
  
"Quite all right," the man assured. "Wouldn't be normal if you didn't sound like that. I'm not saying that she isn't smart, of course; I haven't the foggiest idea of her development rate. But I do know that she's adorable, and will probably turn out to be a beautiful woman."  
  
Mulder grinned, enjoying the praise of his baby girl. "Don't I know it. I'm already creating a screening process that will be applied at any boy who even dares ask her where the cafeteria is."  
  
The man laughed. "Well, now I know you are her father," he joked. "My father was the same way with both of my sisters. I've got three boys, so I can't say I know the feeling, but my wife seems to feel the same way towards ours. Will, our eldest, just got dumped by his first girlfriend."  
  
Mulder grimaced. "Ouch. Been there," he emphasized.  
  
"Haven't we all," agreed the man. "Anyway, his mother...oh, she's driving him up the wall! I think she's as broken-hearted as he is, probably even more so!"  
  
Mulder laughed softly along with the man, thinking that Teena Mulder never showed her sorrow when her son had found Amy Moll, his first steady girlfriend, making out in Eric Rothschild's Chevy.  
  
The man began to describe exactly how his wife was dealing with her son's pain, and Mulder found himself wondering why he was actually interested in this stranger's story. He supposed it was due to the fact that he had at least an hour's wait until it was his turn for the doctor and he'd already read the book he'd brought twice before.  
  
"...here today. That's Stevie over there." Mulder looked over at the child across the room. He held a book in his hand, and he trapped his lip between his teeth in intense concentration.  
  
But the fact that the boy was reading wasn't what caught Mulder's eye. What Mulder noticed was the mop of bright red hair and pale complexion of the boy, characteristics that for years had been Mulder's vision of Scully's possible children.  
  
"Jesus..." Mulder whispered, just loud enough to catch the man's attention.  
  
"You okay, buddy? You look a bit pale."  
  
Mulder shook his head, quickly glancing at Anna to make sure she was where she was supposed to be. "Yeah, I'm fine. Your son, he..." Emily Sim's face flashed through Mulder's mind, and an idea popped into being. "I'm sorry if this sounds presumptuous, but...did you adopt him?"  
  
The man's face showed shock, and Mulder wondered if he was correct. But then the man said, "No. He's ours. Granted we didn't expect him--our other two are fifteen and thirteen--but he came about the old fashioned way. Why do you ask?"  
  
"Oh, he just bears a remarkable resemblance to my wife, and...uh, she donated some of her ova to a, um, foundation a few years ago," Mulder half-lied. "She needed some extra money, and she knew how white babies were hard to come by in adoption agencies, so..."  
  
The man 'mm-hmmmed' so Mulder shut up, seeing that he'd covered well. "Ever come across any of those kids?" He asked curiously.  
  
"Just once. It was, uh, quite an experience." Ain't that the truth, Mulder thought to himself.  
  
"I imagine it would be. So," the man said, swiftly changing topics, "what do you do for a living?"  
  
Mulder began to feel wary with this new line of questioning, yet still somehow felt that the man could be trusted. "I'm an FBI agent."  
  
The man blinked. "Whoa. Dangerous business there. Bet your wife has her share of worries."  
  
Mulder shrugged. "Well, I've got a desk job now. I'm rarely out in the field anymore, a decision I made when I found out about Anna. Anyway, my wife was FBI, too, but she quit a few weeks into her maternity leave. That's when I was offered the desk job, which was a promotion with a bigger check, so we could afford for her to stay home."  
  
"That's good. I just got back from England. My kids lived there all their lives, but the job threw me back across the Pond finally. I was only supposed to have that particular position for two or three years, but it stretched into sixteen."  
  
"Really? I went to Oxford for college."  
  
"Get out! I've been teaching history at a prep school in Oxford. Got to know the campus pretty well. When'd you go there?"  
  
"Graduated in '83. But I hung around the area for another couple of years; I'd planned to stay a lot longer, but my, uh, girlfriend and I had a pretty messy break-up, and she grew up in England, so I decided to get back on Yankee turf. That's when the Bureau requited me."  
  
The man nodded. "Well, I got there in '86, so I must have just missed you. Hell, maybe I didn't. Maybe I was at the pub the night your, uh, girlfriend kicked you out, and we swore to be lifelong friends. Wouldn't that be a gas?"  
  
Mulder laughed. The idea was intriguing, and indeed, he did remember going to a pub the night he found Phoebe wrapped around a man he later found out had been her husband for the last five years.  
  
Before the man could share any more sob stories, Anna appeared at Mulder's knee. "Nappy, Daddy."  
  
Mulder smiled gently and pulled her into his lap. "You sleep, Banana?" The little girl nodded. "You just relax, sweetie." He felt her body go limp as she rested against his chest. He placed his palm to her forehead and frowned at the heat that he found. "Darn. I'll bet she's got the bug." With a sigh, Mulder heaved her up to his shoulder, where she loved to fall asleep.  
  
The man to Mulder's left recognized that their conversation had been abruptly ended, and he picked up a magazine to pass the time.  
  
Indeed, time did pass, and Mulder finally realized that everyone that had arrived before him, save the man to his left, had left the office.  
  
A few minutes later, Dr. Waterston and doctor appeared at the door together, each calling a new patient:  
  
"Anna Mulder?" Mulder stood, gently waking Anna and praying she wouldn't burst into tears.  
  
"Steven Scully?"  
  
Mulder gaped in shock as the man to his left stood in response to the second name. "Wait, your name is Scully?"  
  
The man nodded. "Yeah? C'mere, Steven! Don't tell me we *did* vow to be lifelong friends," he joked.  
  
Mulder shook his head. "No. But, uh, tell me: do you have any siblings?"  
  
The man nodded again. "Three. An older brother and two older sisters. Well, one sister, really. My oldest sister died oh...about seven, eight years ago. Why?"  
  
Mulder just shook his head again, completely dumbfounded. "Are you Charles Scully? Youngest son of Navy Captain William Scully and his wife Margaret?"  
  
Now the man looked wary. "Yes. How do you know me?"  
  
Mulder grinned. "I'm Fox Mulder. I'm your brother-in-law!"  
  
By this point, everyone in the waiting room was watching the exchange intently, as though it were a scene from "As the World Turns".  
  
Charles gaped. "You're the bloke...you're Dana's partner? That's my niece?"  
  
"I guess so. That's my nephew?" he returned, motioning to Stevie.  
  
"I guess so," Charles grinned. "Nice to meetcha, Fox! S'bout time I met my brother's arch nemesis!"  
  
Mulder shook Charles' proffered hand. "I am so glad to meet you, too, Charles. I could use an ally. Oh, and this is Anna Melissa," Mulder explained, pleased to see the grateful smile that spread across his brother-in-law's face.  
  
"Fox," Charles said, tossing his arm around Mulder as they began to walk towards their bemused doctors, "I believe this is the start of a beautiful, *lifelong* friendship."  
  
  
Scully was feeling much better by the time Mulder and Anna returned from the doctor's.  
  
"How'd it go?" she asked, hugging them both. "Was it terribly crowded?"  
  
Mulder nodded and grinned. "Yeah, it was. But hey, Scully, you'll never guess who was sitting to my left..."  
  
THE END  
  
^*^*^  
  
EXTRA NOTE: My apologies to any British reader who felt my portrayal of a man who has lived in England for the last 18 years was beyond stereotypical. I've never been to England, I don't know any real Brits, and I really pulled all that out of my ass at the last second. Forgive me, I have nothing but desire to visit your gorgeous island.  
  
4 out of 5 doctors say expressing your enjoyment of a fanfic to its author increases your life expectancy 23-23.8 years. The other doctor was killed by Cancerman before we could ask him.  
  
jeri quinne, president, xpab (x-philes against bees)  
Gain membership by writing to: ggal1116@yahoo.com  



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